Mercury Madness: First-Ever
Mercury Limits Called "Gift to Polluters" by President
Bush's Political Opposition

DATE:
December 9, 2003

BACKGROUND: The EPA this month announced a draft proposal
to use a "cap and trade" model to regulate mercury
emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

The President's political opponents immediately
attacked the plan.

A "cap and trade" model would
permit power plants to trade mercury "emissions credits"
among themselves while limits would be placed on total mercury
emissions in the U.S.

The White House said the "cap and
trade" system would "cut mercury emissions by 70 percent
from power plants."1
EPA spokesman Cynthia Bergmann said December 2: "We do believe
that a type of cap-and-trade approach will allow us to get greater
reductions in mercury emissions at lower cost."2

The EPA does not currently regulate mercury
emissions from such plants.

The Bush EPA's decision to impose mercury
regulations via a "cap and trade" mechanism has been
attacked by House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and several environmental
organizations and activist groups on the political left.

Some of the criticism is harsh; much
of it is misleading.

The National Resources Defense Council
went so far as to insinuate that the policy is part of a secret
White House policy to hurt children: "The proposal, an early
Christmas gift to the Bush administration's friends in the energy
industry, speaks volumes about the administration's unspoken
policy toward America's children."3

The left-wing activist organization "America
Coming Together," a collection of self-described pro-choice,
environmentalist and union activists, claimed on its main web
page on December 8 that the proposal means "More... mercury
in the water."

Dan Rather took the odd position on the
CBS Evening News that the mercury regulations would not curb
mercury: "The Bush administration will issue new regulations
tomorrow to curb some toxic power plant emissions, such as sulfur
dioxide, but not others, such as potentially dangerous mercury."4

NBC's David Gregory reported on the NBC
Nightly news that "the EPA is preparing to undo stringent
power plant regulations intended to reduce the amount of mercury
pumped into the air by the nation's 1,100 coal and oil-powered
utilities."5

TEN SECOND RESPONSE: The Clinton Administration only talked about
regulating mercury emissions; the Bush Administration is acting
on it.

THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: The EPA has never regulated mercury emissions
from power plants. Those who call the Bush Administration's decision
to impose such regulations a "gift to polluters" have
a strange idea of what constitutes a gift.

DISCUSSION:
"Cap and trade" proposals for limiting pollution have
been successfully used to reduce acid rain, and are considered
a means of reducing pollution in a manner that costs less than
traditional "command and control" regulatory schemes.
President Clinton himself publicly suggested that "cap and
trade" mechanisms to control mercury were under consideration
in his Administration.6

However, in mid-December 2000, Clinton's
EPA announced support for extremely stringent "command and
control" regulations on mercury, to take effect, it suggested,
in 2004.

The late announcement of support for
stringent anti-mercury regulations came after it was too late
for the Clinton Administration to actually impose them, and after
it was clear to Clinton officials that George W. Bush would be
elected. This was seen by some as an effort to force the incoming
Bush Administration to either impose unusually stringent regulations
against or risk being accused of a health and safety "rollback."

Politically, the strategy seems to have
worked.

It is worth noting that some environmentalists
have a conflict of interest in preferring "command and control"
regulatory schemes. Command and control schemes provide outside
interest groups, such as environmentalists, with a greater opportunity
to file at times lucrative lawsuits seeking enforcement. "Cap
and trade" regulatory systems provide fewer opportunities
for lawsuits.

Environmentalists do not always oppose
"cap and trade" proposals, however. As Christopher
Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute suggested on Fox
News's Special Report with Brit Hume on December 3, environmental
organizations have liked such proposals "in other areas
when it is proposed by someone not named Bush; to not put too
fine a point on it."7

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Transcript, "Fox News: Special Report
with Brit Hume," interview of Christopher Horner, Competitive
Enterprise Institute, on mercury proposals, December 3, 2003,
at http://www.cei.org/gencon/023,03769.cfm